Degradation of toluidine red, an oil soluble azo dye by <i>Halomonas strain</i> IP8 at alkaline condition

Abstract

A salt tolerant bacteria, Halomonas strain IP8, was used for the degradation of an oil soluble azo dye, Toluidine Red (C.I. no. 12120). The effect of different culture conditions such as initial dye concentration, pH, NaCl percent (w/v) and temperature were studied at static condition using the one-factor-at-a-time method (OFAT) method as optimization technique. According to the results, the optimized conditions were 25 mg/l dye concentration, pH 9.5, 5% (w/v) NaCl, and temperature 35 °C. The decolorization mechanism was analyzed through UV–vis spectrophotometric method, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), and gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) analyses. UV–vis scan of supernatants before and after treatment suggested that decolorization was accrued under degradation mechanism rather than inactive surface adsorption. HPLC analysis confirmed this conclusion. The identified metabolite from GC-MS results was 1-diazo 2-naphtol at m/z 170 ± 1. A pathway was proposed for dye degradation based on the identified fragment by GC-MS analysis.